The Case for Cooperative Play
This is the big brother of the kid that just headshotted you
As a recovering gamer, I've spent the last 10 years or so trying not to play games. Oh, I've been involved with them, kept track of them… heck, I had a subscription to many a gaming magazine under the pretense of keeping myself informed so that I could tell my parents what to buy my brother for Christmas. Never mind that I hadn't owned a game system since the original Playstation, I could rattle off the top 5 games in every category for every system without thinking about it.
One of the things about gaming, at least when I was playing, was that it was mostly a solitary sport. You sat home, played through a game, and either set it aside or played it again. Some games like Tekken or Virtual Fighter could be played with another but online play was not an option. Side scrollers like Contra were really the option if you wanted to have a true co-op experience - one where you beat the game together rather than fighting each other - but the other person had to be in the room with you.
Back in the day, I didn't mind so much the adversarial nature of many games - mostly because I was the best at them within my circle of friends. Mortal Kombat anyone? I could do every finishing move including Friendships and Babalities. People would come over just to get stomped by me so that they could see the finishing moves. I went to a party once where I played for 4 straight hours and lost 2 rounds (not matches). It's was brutal (even by Mortal Kombat standards).
Fast forward a decade or so and I find myself in the possession of an Xbox 360. A quantum leap in graphics and sound not to mention online play really elevated games to an entirely new level. A level where my once dominance is now completely surpassed by 15 year old kids that play 10+ hours a day and seem to have superhuman reflexes and aiming ability. It quickly became apparent to me that no amount of practice on my part was ever going to bring me up to a level that I once enjoyed among my friends. The promise of online play didn't bring me the sweet fruit of new challenges as much as the bitter leaves of unending defeat at the hands of people that can't reliably use "your" and "you're" correctly in a forum post. People that sound like a group of girls until you realize that their voices just haven't changed yet. Sorry, but that's a little much for any ego to take.
Discouraged, I retreated to a small group of friends that I knew were near my same level of ability. But then what's the point of online play? Isn't that just wasted? Enter Gears of War (GoW). Much lauded for its graphics, engaging story, and unique fighting (no, you can't jump because only a fool jumps around in the firefight), the feature I found most intriguing was the online co-op mode. Co-op (cooperative) games allow two or more people to play through missions or maps basically fighting on the same side. Quite a few games have a few co-op missions or maps but GoW allowed you to play through the entire game together. From start to finish. Ah… now here's something I can get behind! Me and a friend running through a complete game without having to do split screen (which sucks no matter how big your screen is) or being in the same room over a system link (which I can't imagine happens very much). The computer becomes the enemy and no matter how much it cheats (and if you set the difficulty high enough, it always seems to cheat); you still have a better chance than you do against a 15 year old in a sniper match.
Now, I love playing multiplayer but honestly, headshotting your friends from across the map gets a little old after a while. Team Slayer type games are better because you once again get that sense of camaraderie but then you need to find a group of people around the same level as you to play with. Not to mention that you can only talk to people on your team. That alone takes a lot of the fun out of it for me. Usually, there is one person that totally outmatches the rest and he ends up being a "team" with everyone else just trying to stay alive.
Halo 3, touted and bought mostly for it's multiplayer elements, included a 4 player co-op mode that allows you to team up with up to 3 friends in order to complete the game. The story mode in this game is definitely the weak spot but playing through with friends is a huge plus. You end up calling out for help, thanking someone after they saved you (doesn't matter that you'll just re-spawn, you had the rocket launcher!), and noting someone's great shot.
To me, this is what video games were always supposed to be about - having fun with other people. Sure, slaughtering your friends 1000's of times is fun, but eventually it gets old. Working together to achieve a common goal is much more rewarding. Are games like World of Warcraft (WoW) so popular because of the graphics or compelling story? No. It's the community. But again, WoW requires a significant investment of time. An investment that'd I'd be happy to give if I didn't have to eat, sleep, or pay bills. Games like Gears and Halo 3 (and the "I can't wait for it to come out" Army of Two) have a finite beginning and end, and there is no "leveling up" that requires endless hours of killing kobolds. While cooperative campaign play is now the exception, I look forward to the day when it is included in every game… or the day when I retire so I can have the time to practice enough to put a hurting on some 15 year olds in Halo 42.
Recent Forum Posts:
I completely agree with you. I think we may have a lot in common when it comes to games. In the early mid 90s (pre-Internet) I enjoyed geek-fests at a friend’s places. A turn based PC strategy game (Warlords II) often went on in tandem to ongoing Mortal Kombat rage. These were evenings of female repellent to be sure.
The Internet ruined many of my geek pastimes before online gaming could even gain a foothold.
But we used the Internet to meet other players of a certain card game we took to very early on. My circle of friends used play this ‘new’ concept in game, a certain collectible card game based on fantasy and magic. We’d gleefully create imaginative decks that reflected our personalities. Characters, spells, monsters and strategies were all very colorful and imaginative.
Then we decided to use the early/mid 90s Internet to meet other groups who also played the game.
Having met the real world we discovered the game had been desecrated like an unholy temple. We played frustrating games with these other people who didn’t care for the ‘fantasy’ aspect of the game. These new players had learned to break the whole game down to its lowest common denominator.
They applied a level of analysis that never occurred to us. They had actually come up with an “ultimate” deck based on all available cards in the first gen of this game. The strategy was purely defensive and prevented anyone from doing anything. The whole game became a snore-fest. We couldn’t put the genie back into the bottle after we saw what the game was capable of.
Needless to say the game was ruined. One could say we were rather foolish never having figured out this ‘ultimate’ winning strategy ourselves. But then, who were the fools? The fools who played oblivious to winning strategies … or the fools who kept playing this simplistic exercise in tic-tac-toe they had created out of a once imaginative and stimulating game.
First Person Shooters
I feel the same way about first person shooters including Quake ## on PC and Halo## on Xbox Live. I love the style of game, I love head to head firefights. Running for your life when your health gets low, tossing grenades and following it with machine-gun fire. Taking hits to get down into the deep cover of safety. Now all these games have two ‘ultimate’ weapons, the sniper rifle and the rocket launcher. There is no real battle anymore.
Yeah, it’s fun to snipe – for about five minutes. Online there is no end to the array of kids that will continually rack up kills in death match games against far inferior opponents. They don’t look for challenge or fun, they just want to be the ‘best’ and will use any cheese tactic.
It’s no secret - I am not looking for the high score, I’m looking for a good match. I’m looking for knee deep firefights, face to face. If I could ban rocket launchers and one-shot kill weapons I would.
So, basically I think these games, for me, have come full circle. I simply don’t play with people I don’t know anymore. I joined random games of Halo3 just to check it out. But now, if I’m going to play it’s only with like-minded people. People like me who have a job outside of the game.
For me the frag-fest is just mindless entertainment. If I ever –EVER get to the point where I feel I must practice to get better at it, just shoot me.
XboxLive GamerTag: epicondylitus
It’s the name of nerve damage condition suffered in the forearm from playing too many twitch video games. I am a living experiment in the long term effects of playing too many video games.
